Dog of War
by Sylvr
Summary: Drabbles about Eliot, and why he is the way he is. No pairings. A bit of Eliotwhumping. Safety rating.
1. Voice

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot' first girlfriend had been in love with his voice. She said it was smooth and rich and warm, like dark chocolate. She'd loved to sit and listen to him sing, his voice sweet and clear. Then Eliot spent three months screaming his lungs out in the interrogation room of a Croatian prison. By the time he got out, his voice sounded like a bag of gravel instead of the pleasant tenor it had been.

He'd run into his first girlfriend a little over a year later. She hadn't recognized him. He hadn't cared. But it hurt a little.

* * *

_I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It's a voice of pain and victory.  
__Anthony Hamilton_

* * *

**A/N: I'm new to the Leverage fandom, but I really couldn't resist writing some stuff for Eliot. So this series is going to be drabbles, more-or-less unrelated but all about Eliot. Enjoy! I'll try to post lots.**


	2. Short

DOG OF WAR

Eliot was not a very big man. He was broad across the shoulders and built like a tank, but if you actually measured his height he was barely five foot ten. When Parker wore her heavy boots and Sophie wore heels, he was the shortest member of the team. Hardison actually weighed more than him. But mostly people didn't notice his height. He had a way of looming through sheer force of personality that overshadowed physical stature.

God forbid you mention a Napoleon complex, though. Hardison learned that the hard way.

* * *

_Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor. _

_Benjamin Disraeli_

* * *

**A/N: It amuses me that Eliot is short. Not super short, but he's really not a very big guy.**


	3. Irony

DOG OF WAR

* * *

It was a little ironic. He spent a decent amount of his time getting punched and punching people. Mostly people with guns. The team assumed he could handle it, and they were right—they just weren't aware of how much time he spent as walking wounded. Honestly, after most jobs he was in need of some sort of medical attention. That was just how things worked. He could take the punishment.

So it was ironic that the one time Nate assumed his hitter was walking into a fight to the death—facing down thirty of Moreau's gunmen—he came out without a scratch.

* * *

_It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.  
__Samuel Johnson_

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**A/N: Since I had reviews so quickly, I decided to post another right away as thanks. You guys are the best!**


	4. Control

DOG OF WAR

* * *

When he placed his palm over his heart and told Sophie that what he controlled was inside, he didn't just mean violence. Yeah, he had to keep a tight leash on his temper—his real temper, not the half-playful rage he showed the team—but that wasn't all. When he said his control was internal, he meant more than just anger. He kept control over all his emotions: anger, sorrow, happiness, and love alike. The rest of the team found over time that they liked working together, liked each other. Eliot had realized about three jobs in that he could be content here. This could be something he could be good at. These could be people he could like; people who might like him.

He loosened up the control on his heart a little bit and began to love the thieves he found himself protecting.

* * *

_Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.  
__Virginia Satir_


	5. Macho

DOG OF WAR

* * *

He really wasn't a vain guy. Sure, he knew he was a good looking man, and he used that to his advantage. Years in the military had imbued a sort of habitual cleanliness in him, and well-tailored clothing was good for concealing weapons in. He had the money to afford nice things, and he indulged a bit in jewelry he liked and a wardrobe that flattered him. Mostly it was for work. His hair had grown out in prison, though, and once he got out he was so used to it that he left it that way. It was his own little act of rebellion against the past.

He was reclaiming long hair as a macho thing.

* * *

_To be with the others, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean?  
__Jimi Hendrix_


	6. Truth

DOG OF WAR

It took the team a while to figure out that Eliot didn't lie. Not to them. Not ever. You don't con your crew. He didn't always tell then the whole truth, but he never outright lied. He was an excellent grifter—second only to Sophie on the team—but he never tried to con his teammates. When he said he'd done something, he'd done it. When he told them he could take someone, he could. He didn't lie about his past. They knew it wasn't pretty, but they never asked for details.

They knew that if they asked, he'd tell them the truth.

* * *

_The truth is rarely pure and never simple.  
__Oscar Wilde_


	7. Ache

DOG OF WAR

* * *

He ached. All the time, not just after fights, though it was certainly stronger then. Though he might not carry the visible marks of every battle he'd fought, the remains of each blow plagued him every day—stiff joints, aching muscles. His right pinkie finger couldn't straighten all the way, and unless he stretched it every day, he had only partial range of movement in his left shoulder. Seven of his toes had no toenails anymore. He'd lost about twenty percent capacity in one lung, and his fingers had been broken too many times to be quite straight anymore.

But that was just part of the job. Eventually, he knew that all those little aches and pains would be enough to make him too slow and broken to keep protecting the team, but until then, he'd keep taking the punishment.

It was worth it to see his family happy and safe.

* * *

_Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. _

_Douglas MacArthur_


	8. Forget

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot lets Sophie off the hook without too much fuss, all told. Sure, he messes with her a bit, but not more than she deserves. Can't the dang woman just say she's sorry? And Hardison, terrified as he is of the hitter, really doesn't have that much to be afraid of. Eliot has never actually kicked the crap out of him without very very good reason. He practically let him go for the whole sandwich incident, and even spilled slurpee in his beloved pickup had been forgiven without too much drama. It was all in good fun.

But Hardison wasn't allowed to have food of any kind in Eliot's vehicles anymore. And leftovers in the fridge are always labeled now. And he makes more contingency plans than ever, these days, and a lot of them are in case of betrayal.

Eliot forgives. He never forgets.

* * *

_Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.  
__Charlotte Bronte_

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**A/N: I got so many reviews so quickly off the last few chapters that I figured I'd post a bonus. And to Lisette: I miss my cats because they live at my house, which is in a different state from the dorm room where I live.**


	9. Promise

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot doesn't like making promises, but when he does, he keeps them. Or he does his best to, anyways. He'd promised to serve his country, and he had, no matter what, right up until his country forgot about him and left him to rot in jail far from home. He'd promised to always come back for Aimee, and he had, until he crawled out of the pit the government had left him in and found her married to another man. After that he stopped promising people things. Now the only promises he makes are to himself—_I promise I will never do _that_ again. I promise to not let anyone ever control me again. I promise to never be that weak again. _

_I promise no one will ever hurt them again._

Eliot keeps his promises—right up until someone else breaks them.

* * *

_Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.  
__Jean-Jacques Rousseau_


	10. Frizz

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot had angry hair. This was Parker's theory, anyways. The angrier he got the bigger and wilder his hair was. When a con was going well, his hair was smooth and neat and kind of macho, but when things went wrong, he got mad, and his hair fluffed up like a lion's mane …or an angry cat.

Not even Parker was crazy enough to tell Eliot that, though.

* * *

_True friends stab you in the front.  
__Oscar Wilde_


	11. Break

DOG OF WAR

* * *

It always amused him, in a morbid sort of way, when someone threatened to break him. Mostly, these threats came from the sort of men he could eat for breakfast, and the idea of them actually doing any sort of lasting damage to him was laughable. Not so laughable he didn't take them seriously, but really. Too frequently they came from men who would delight in tearing the flesh off his bones inch by inch. Those didn't scare him either. The best torturers and interrogators in the world had tried to break him, and they hadn't done it. Really, none of them understood.

You can't break what's already broken. Eliot had been broken for a long time now. It's made him strong.

* * *

_The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.  
__Ernest Hemingway_


	12. Moon

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Hardison was convinced Eliot was part wolf. Maybe he was a government experiment or something, but the man couldn't be all human. He was just…off. He was too strong for someone his size, for one, and it was literally impossible to do some of the things he did. No matter how skillful he was, nobody could dodge bullets as successfully as Eliot did. And he sat too still. When he wasn't busy doing something, he just sort of went perfectly lax and waited, like some sort of predatory animal blending into the background. And he was too manly. It was like he was trying to cover up for something, and not in a gay way.

So, yeah, he'd called meetings on the full moon just to see if Eliot would be there, and wasn't out in the woods howling.

He was pretty sure Eliot was just yanking his chain by not showing up. Pretty sure.

* * *

_You know honestly I think there's a Dracula, a Wolf Man, and a Frankenstein's Monster in all of us. They are sides of our own character so that's why I think we can relate to them in terms of a 'I know how that feels' kind of thing.  
__Richard Roxburgh_


	13. Reform

DOG OF WAR

* * *

The team liked to think that Eliot had reformed, that he didn't kill anymore. That he'd had some sort of moral revelation when he started hitting for the white hats. There was some truth in that, he supposed. He was certainly less eager to kill than he had been. But it wasn't because he suddenly decided that killing was wrong. He knew there were people in the world that deserved to die. He was one of them. These days, he really only thought about killing who the team asked him to. But he restrained himself not for his own heavy conscience, but for the team's. He knew that he wouldn't be too bothered by killing anyone who hurt his little group of friends. Parker had asked him, barely joking, to dismember and decapitate the faux psychic who had brought up her brother. Eliot didn't. He knew that as satisfying as it might seem now, Parker would feel terrible about having blood on her hands—even if it was via Eliot-later.

Eliot didn't mind more blood on his hands, but he didn't want any on his friends'.

* * *

_The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time.  
__Frank Miller_


	14. Laugh

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot laughed with is eyebrows. When he was amused, his eyes glittered, and he smiled, pleased and wide, but you knew he was really enjoying himself when he did a quick up-and-down with his eyebrows. He had a real, out loud laugh, too. It was quiet and dry, almost a rasp, two or three huffed breaths.

Parker liked it when Eliot eyebrow-laughed. It meant he was happy. She liked it when he was happy.

* * *

_Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.  
__Margaret Lee Runbeck_


	15. Fit

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot was the best personal trainer anyone could have asked for. It was Parker who got him started on it—she liked his style, and asked, blunt as ever, that he teach her how to hurt people. Eventually, he agreed. Hardison joined after a few months, mostly to get closer to Parker and sort of because punching stuff made him feel like a badass. Once he had two regular students, Eliot became a taskmaster. They worked out nearly daily, and they'd better have a really good excuse if they expected Eliot to let them skip. Sophie even joined them occasionally. Eliot was a good teacher; he recognized when his students didn't understand and was surprisingly patient. And very motivational.

Hardison asked him once why he was so determined to teach them how to fight.

Ellot said, "It's my job to watch your backs. Sometimes, that means I have to make sure you can do it yourself. I'm not always going to be around."

* * *

_My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light!  
__Edna St. Vincent Millay_

* * *

**_A/N: So, this chapter brings us up to fifteen. Tomorrow I'll post five chapters to have an even twenty, because tomorrow is my twentieth birthday! Yay! So I'm giving you a present!_**

**_Thanks so much to all my reviewers. I really wouldn't be doing this without you._**


	16. Birthday

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot didn't do well with surprise birthday parties. The team had never witnessed this; they just knew it was common sense. Don't sneak up on the professional killer and try to get the jump on him. Duh. It was Parker who brought it up, actually, that they didn't know when Eliot's birthday was. They didn't know hers, either, and she wouldn't tell them until they explained that she would get presents. Then she told them it was April 1st. The team assumed this was probably not true, but they celebrated it anyways. Eliot made a cake. Eliot always made cakes on people's birthdays, actually, and they were always delicious. But not for his own.

They never managed to get his birthday out of him. It became a bit of a game, actually, trying to guess. Really, it would make sense that Eliot, whose life contained so much risk, would want to celebrate the survival of another year, but he didn't.

Eventually, the team wound up just picking a day at random, once a year, and forcing presents and ice cream (because none of the rest of them could make a cake, and Eliot refused to suffer the indignity of a store-bought one) on their hitter. He scoffed and protested, but they noticed that he tucked the cards carefully into his coat pocket afterwards.

None of them said anything. No one needed to. They all understood.

* * *

_Presents don't really mean much to me. I don't want to sound mawkish, but - it was the realization that I have a great many people in my life who really love me, and who I really love.  
**Gabriel Byrne ** _

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**_A/N: Today, I am twenty; unlike Eliot, I'm perfectly happy to celebrate my birthday! So I'm posing five chapters today! Enjoy!_**


	17. Liberate

DOG OF WAR

* * *

He hadn't set out to liberate Croatia. It just sort of…happened. He'd been lucky enough to stumble across a couple of helpful civilians after his escape from prison, and by the time he recovered from the interrogations, he'd grown to like the family of eight that had taken him in.

When Pitor, the hard-working father who'd spared hard-earned money to pay for a doctor for an incoherent, injured, dangerous stranger, had his shop seized by the government, Elliot had silently gotten up from his sickbed. Corrupt government? Okay. He had a bone to pick with governments in general anyways.

This was something he could take care of.

* * *

_Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.  
__Henry David Thoreau_


	18. Amuse

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot thought he was very funny. Not in an annoying way, most of the time. He just thought that he was amusing in a self-parodying sort of way. Funny looking, even. Hardison saw this the most, what with the Mr. Punchy graphic and the Japanese commercial for that ballpark job. For such a tough (and insecure) guy, Eliot was surprisingly good about laughing at himself, though he sometimes got touchy when it was other people doing the laughing.

Hardison liked the way Eliot was almost childishly amused at the silly things the hacker did with the hitter's image. It was why he kept doing them.

* * *

_The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.  
__Shirley MacLaine_


	19. Embrace

DOG OF WAR

* * *

When Hardison climbs out of the coffin, Eliot hugs him. He usually restrains himself, but Eliot is a physical kind of guy. Mostly his 'physical side' emerges in broken bones on anyone who attacks him, but before the years of hitting and being hit, he used to enjoy casual touch without flinching. These days, he can accept light contact that's clearly telegraphed beforehand from people he can trust. Basically, if the team makes it obvious, they can tap his shoulder or smack him lightly without getting injured. It takes a lot to get his guard down enough to allow a full-on hug.

But the team is _his_ to protect, and he'd nearly lost Hardison. He permitted himself the reassuring embrace—just this once.

* * *

_Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.  
__Aristotle_


	20. Angry

DOG OF WAR

* * *

The first thing most people realize about Eliot is also the thing most of them never really _get_.

Eliot is angry all the time.

No, really, _all the time._ Not just when he's feeling violent, or when Hardison's annoying him, or when Parker's poking his injury-of-the-week. All the time. When he's sitting on the couch at Nate's and watching a game, he's angry. When he's making the whole team's favorite dishes for a post-con celebration, he's angry. When he's quietly laughing because Hardison's put his foot in his mouth trying to complement Parker, _again_, he's angry.

It's always there, bubbling just below the surface. Waiting. Even he's not completely sure what or who he's angry about, but he is. He can cover it up with other feelings, be happy even, but it's always there. Probably always will be.

But Eliot learned to deal with being the youngest quarterback on the football team. He learned to deal with being the smallest guy anyone knew in special ops. He learned to deal with not using guns in a business that revolved around bullets, and he's learned to deal with being angry. He copes and compensates.

He controls. And the team doesn't care if he's angry all the time. They know that no matter how angry he gets, he'll never ever hurt them.

Because he cares about them _all the time_, too.

* * *

_The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough.  
_**_Bede Jarrett_******


	21. Shirts

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Sophie nagged him about his layered shirts. Her high-bred fashion sense objected to his perpetually casual wardrobe. Hardison did it too, making jabs about the rough-and-and ready cowboy vibe. Eliot didn't care. He liked the way he dressed, and the shirts were useful.

He sliced the top shirt into strips with the knife he'd had concealed underneath it, then wrapped the makeshift plaid bandages around the bleeding gash in his leg. Who's laughing now?

* * *

_I am not a wolf in sheep's clothing, I'm a wolf in wolf's clothing.  
__Ricky Gervais_


	22. Injury

DOG OF WAR

* * *

When Eliot's hurt, he goes quiet, like a wounded animal. Especially when it's a head injury. He sits real still, maybe favoring one side or the other. Except when there's a non-team member somewhere nearby; then he goes military-stiff. He gets silent and still, and as soon as the team doesn't need him anymore, he slinks off to whatever dark hole he's got nearby, to stitch himself back together. He'll show up with ice on his wounds for the next few days.

Yeah, he's quiet when he's injured—until Parker starts poking at him. Then he growls. Because he knows that if Parker is sure he's strong enough to take a little poking, she knows he's strong enough to protect them. It's what he does.

* * *

_I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.  
__Winston Churchill_


	23. Careful

DOG OF WAR

* * *

The team thought he had it easier than before, just having to knock people out. Didn't have to kill anybody, these days. Just KOs all around. They didn't get that it was easy to do permanent damage knocking somebody out; that if he it just an inch off target, he could cause brain damage. If he struck a little too hard, bones would break, joints tear.

They didn't understand how easy it was to kill people, and how careful he had to be not to.

* * *

_Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.  
__Baltasar Gracian_

* * *

_**A/N: I'm so sorry I took so long to post these today! You get three instead of two as an apology.**_


	24. Online

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Hardison makes fun of him for not having a computer or internet at his place. Eliot takes it and teases back, but he never folds and lets the younger man install it like he's repeatedly offered to do.

Eliot knows his weaknesses. Computers are one of them. He's not going to make himself vulnerable by installing something in his home he knows nothing about.

* * *

_Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.  
__W. H. Auden_


	25. Dream

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot doesn't sleep like normal people do. He gets 90 minutes a day. Occasionally, when he's injured, or, more rarely, sick, he allows himself more. He doesn't keep a regular schedule with it, either, because habit kills, so one day he sleeps from one am to two-thirty am; the next day he might sleep from eleven-thirty am to noon. It makes him less predictable, and keeps the nightmares from getting too bad. Hardison is convinced that his minimal sleep schedule is the main contributing factor of his bad attitude, but Eliot gets enough rest. He just prefers to get it through meditation or relaxing activities like gardening or cleaning his weapons.

Hardison stops complaining that Eliot doesn't sleep enough after he tries to wake the hitter and winds up with a black eye.

* * *

_Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.  
__Warren Buffett_

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**A/N: I noticed that Eliot, with all his hobbies and tasks, must have a lot to do, and a lot of enemies, but we rarely see him doing much other than relaxing on the show. My theory is that he operates much like I do: getting most of his important work done late at night, when most people are asleep, so he has time to hang out with friends during daylight hours. But that alone can't account for his limited sleep—I only get about three hours a night, and one and a half sounds like too little even to me. I think it's mostly a product of paranoia, bad memories and nightmares, not that Eliot would admit to that. **


	26. Like

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Some people said they didn't like spiders, and by "didn't like," they meant "Spiders are sent from hell and if I see one I will run screaming like a little girl." Eliot didn't like guns. By "didn't like," he meant that he didn't like them. He wasn't afraid. He didn't hate them. He wasn't inept or unable to use them. He just didn't like them.

Or, more accurately, he doesn't like what he does with guns.

* * *

_Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.  
__Virginia Woolf_


	27. Hobby

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot has certain, very predictable hobbies. He rides horses. He fixes cars, watches sports. Reads military magazines and articles. Plays guitar and sings country music at a tiny local bar when he's got the time, not that he'd ever confess that to the team. He meets up once a month with some old military friends for dinner and poker or a game once a month. He fishes when he has the chance. He works out—at the gym, in his personal gym, outside, wherever.

But he also read classic literature. Every other weekend he worked with the kids at the shelter downtown, teaching them self-defense. The songs he sang at the bar he wrote himself, and he was dang good at it—he'd gotten offers from a few record companies. (He turned them down, but couldn't help feeling a little proud.) He kept a greenhouse big enough to feed himself and the team, and sold what he didn't use at the farmer's market.

If he kept himself busy enough, he could almost ignore the screaming in his head.

* * *

_To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.  
__Buddha___


	28. Kung Fu

DOG OF WAR

* * *

He's not a fancy fighter. Efficient, yes. Dangerous, yes. But he doesn't do backflips and he doesn't do stupid hand-waving crap before a fight and he's never once used an elaborate move when a simple one would do the job just as well. He fights with both feet on the ground, thank you very much. It annoys him when he has to fight some namby-pamby martial artist who spends more time flipping around the room than actually fighting.

It is really satisfying to hit those ones, though. They're always so shocked.

* * *

_I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.  
__Voltaire_

* * *

__**A/N: I'm sorry about this one being late to post too. I'm afraid the next few will be-I've got late concerts every night this week. I'll try to keep on posting regularly, though.**


	29. Steady

DOG OF WAR

* * *

There's not much that can move Eliot when he doesn't want to be moved. Hardison's seen him stand rock solid when someone tried to force him to kneel, hitting his knees so hard that there were still bruises three weeks later. But Eliot didn't fold.

So Hardison knew that when Sophie or Parker "dragged" Eliot off to go help them with something, Eliot was just putting up a show.

* * *

_You win the victory when you yield to friends.  
__Sophocles_


	30. Pack

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot's a killer, born and bred. And he's done a _lot_ of killing. He's not proud of it, it's just who he is. And that's not an excuse, it's fact. The thing inside him just wants to hurt things and watch them bleed and suffer and die. It doesn't really care who. There have been times in his life when Eliot didn't care enough to bother keeping it restrained. He didn't talk about those times. He couldn't forget them.

But for the first time in a very long time, the beast is content to protect instead of attack. After all—even a wolf has its pack.

* * *

_All species capable of grasping this fact manage better in the struggle for existence than those which rely upon their own strength alone: the wolf, which hunts in a pack, has a greater chance of survival than the lion, which hunts alone.  
__Christian Lous Lange_


	31. Neighbor

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Once a week, whenever he's in town and they're not running a job, he makes dinner for the old lady next door. She doesn't get out much, and he's a very cautious neighbor, but somehow they got to know each other a bit and it just sort of happened. He liked to cook, but he didn't like eating alone, so it worked out well. She had a son serving overseas with the army. Eliot was pretty sure she saw him as some sort of surrogate for her absent child. He didn't mind.

They could both use the company.

* * *

_A man by himself is in bad company.  
__Eric Hoffer_


	32. Best

DOG OF WAR

* * *

He can see the fear in their eyes the first time he gets violent in front of them. They're all the best there is at what they do, but he knows that the reality of being the best there is at _hurting people_ is a little more than most people can wrap their brains around. It's dirty and nasty and crude and primal and terrifying in a way that their chosen paths of crime aren't.

Eliot got used to it. He hopes they don't have to.

* * *

_One is not exposed to danger who, even when in safety is always on their guard.  
__Publilius Syrus_


	33. Past

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot doesn't talk about what he did before he was a hitter. If he did, the team would probably understand him a lot better. If he told them about the mother who died of cancer when he was six, or the father who'd fallen into an abusive drunken stupor afterwards, they'd get why he was always so opposed to Nate drinking. If he told them about the mildly autistic little sister who he'd spent his childhood desperately protecting and raising, they'd understand why he was so tolerant of Parker's oddities. If he told them about the day his father had grabbed his then-twelve-year-old sister with a leer on his face, and the endless moment after fifteen-year-old Eliot had taken his a shotgun and shot his father where he stood, they'd understand why he got so protective when men looked at Sophie the wrong way. If they knew about the aging obese hacker Eliot had met four months after he ran away from his father's corpse, and the terrible things he'd done for that man in exchange for a new, older identity, they'd understand why he didn't like it when Hardison hung out with other hackers.

Yeah, he could tell them, and they'd understand him a lot better. But he didn't want understanding—just acceptance.

* * *

_Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.  
__Jim Morrison___


	34. Cool

DOG OF WAR

* * *

He knew Nate was smarter than him. Hardison was smarter than him by about a mile. Heck, Sophie and Parker were probably smarter than him too. But he had something that the rest of the team didn't have. He had experience dealing with the worst of humanity when lives were depending on him. He knew what to do when the price for a job gone wrong wasn't just jail time or a missed prize, but people.

He could keep his head when everyone was dying around him, and he sincerely hoped that he never had to find out if "everyone" includes his team.

* * *

_I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack.  
_**_Jodi Picoult_******


	35. Child

DOG OF WAR

* * *

He had clean hands, once. Bright eyes, full of hope and faith and patriotism. Things changed. Eliot went to war. Got wounded, tortured. Killed people. He stopped caring, the world turned red. He didn't care who he killed, didn't care if he got hurt. And then he found Nate and the team. Slowly, he changed. He began to wonder if maybe he could be that bright-eyed boy again.

He woke up every day hoping to see that hopeful child in the mirror again.

* * *

_Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.  
__Plautus_


	36. Confident

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Unlike the rest of the team, Eliot was exactly as good as he thought he was. Maybe he didn't look it, but he was. When he said he could take someone, he wasn't guessing or bragging—he knew it, like Parker knew padlocks, or Hardison could hack phones. Eliot knew that he was individually more dangerous than nearly any other single human in the world. And that was fact.

In his line of work, overconfidence killed.

* * *

_To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.  
__Francois de La Rochefoucauld_


	37. Smile

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot knows that Parker is bad with people. She doesn't understand their emotions, the ways the rest of the world thinks. In fact, she doesn't even get her own emotions, doesn't notice that she's broken. She knows she is—she's been told often enough that she is, but she doesn't know how. She doesn't get herself, and so there's no way she could understand others. She doesn't get the difference between expressions that look similar. Like, for example, Eliot's amused-smile and his that-really-hurts-smile. They're both smiles that can be followed with a you're-getting-injured-soon-smile.

Parker, luckily, had figured out that last one.

* * *

_Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.  
__George Eliot_


	38. Skin

DOG OF WAR

* * *

One of the first things he got with the money from that first job was cosmetic surgery. Not the girly, face lift kind, but the kind where they graft big chunks of skin over your scars so it's like they never happened. Eliot didn't make it so far as a hitter without getting his fair share of scars, and by the time he met the team, he couldn't go out in public in a short sleeve shirt without turning heads. The surgery changed that.

He'd never pass for normal, but at least he looked like less of a monster.

* * *

_Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.  
__Friedrich Nietzsche_


	39. Aim

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot was smart. Not the way Hardison or Nate were smart, but the way a wolf was smart; smart in the way of blood and teeth. He paid attention, noticed things others missed. He knew himself and his limits. And when he needed to be, he _could_ be smart like Nate was, in the master plan sense of things. Liberating entire countries took brains. But when he joined the team, that part of himself fell to the background. It wasn't needed. He had the smartest men he'd ever known to do the thinking for him. If they could get him to his targets, he could get anything they aimed him at.

All he had to do was keep them safe.

* * *

_It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. _

_Albert Einstein_


	40. Clothes

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot knew clothes. He could spot custom tailoring from fifty paces and name every dress waistline in the book. When Sophie wanted to go shopping and none of her friends were in town, she occasionally managed to talk Eliot into it. He went along with her, carried her bags, and told her what looked good on her. Not that she needed much telling. He almost never let her do it. Sometimes, though, she made an offer too good to refuse. Also, she had a tendency to say thanks by setting him up with attractive female friends who were looking for the same kind of evening he was.

Eliot could handle a few hours of playing commentator and packhorse for that.

* * *

_The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.  
__Virginia Woolf_


	41. Retire

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Sometimes he thinks about retiring.

Well, "thinks about" is probably inaccurate. Sometimes he _fantasizes _about retiring. He never did it before the team, but every once in a while, he lets himself indulge in the mental image of a sprawling wooden house, nestled on the sloping green edge of a mountain. The house is surrounded by clean white fencing, and a dozen horses roam the extensive paddocks. A big barn in back houses the animals and a small museum's worth of beautiful vehicles, but there's a battered pickup parked out front. A deep river runs on the edge of the ranch, perfect for fishing, and thick woods border the other side, full of deer. Steep overhangs shade deep decks that wrap around the house, and there's tables and chairs underneath, sheltered from sun and storm. Inside, the house is clean and elegant, but lived-in. There's a big kitchen with every appliance he can dream of, and a recording studio in the basement. It's mostly one story, so he won't have to haul his aching old body up and down the stairs too often.

Nate and Sophie would have the wing on the right, still bickering as much as ever, though by then they'd actually _be_ an old married couple. Hardison and Parker could share the left wing, if the hacker could ever manage to talk her out of her warehouse. Eliot would take the center rooms, where he could see the whole property, and every approach to the house—just in case. They'd be happy and crotchety and probably still stealing.

Sometimes it was nice to dream.

* * *

_Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of Heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don't forget when you leave why you came.  
__Adlai E. Stevenson_


	42. Name

DOG OF WAR

* * *

After he left the military, he made his name with guns. His drawl and preference for pistols quickly earned him the nickname "Gunslinger." He'd never much cared for it. There were maybe half a dozen men on the face of the planet who could do what he could with guns. He was the only one who was willing to sell his skills for the right price. Mostly that price was paid by one Damien Moreau.

That changed after the prison. When he broke out, he did it with his bare hands. He slaughtered his way through an entire garrison of guards with nothing but his fists and a whole lot of angry. He kept going that way for quite a while, until the violence wasn't something he even thought about. It was habit. The legend of Eliot Spencer spread even further than before, overwriting the Gunslinger stories with new ones. Eventually, though, he looked down and realized that his hands were covered in blood. He didn't like it. So he stopped killing people.

He still got to hit people, though. He liked hitting people.

* * *

_Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.  
__Aristotle___


	43. Grimace

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot smiling was almost always a bad sign. Seriously, he pretty much never actually smiled when he was actually happy. He did this little smirking thing. Eliot smiling was almost always a precursor to a knock down, drag out fight. Sometimes, he smiled right after somebody punched him.

Smart people ran away right about then.

* * *

_It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one's belly, in order to be able to save one's head.  
__Mahatma Gandhi_


	44. Method

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot had A Method. The Method had been developed painstakingly in long weeks of blood and agony. It was what kept him from talking when everything logical in him said to spill his guts. It kept him calm and controlled when all he wanted to do was rip out the throats of his captors with his teeth. He'd never once been broken by an interrogator. The trick of it was to stay calm, centered. To live in the moment, not worrying about what they were going to do to you next. The worrying alone could drive you mad. They could do anything they wanted to his body, but his mind and emotions were his own. Nothing could unseat his own internal stability. The things that would break a lesser man didn't rock his serenity. He couldn't control what they did to him or where they took him, but he could control himself.

There were times that that control had been all he had.

* * *

_Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.  
__Walter Elliot_


	45. Boots

DOG OF WAR

* * *

His shoes were heavy. He wore some kind of boot, usually, but even his shoes were thick-soled, often with custom steel toes. Sophie despaired of his spending serious money on footwear that wasn't even _designer_, but it really had nothing to do with looks. Heavy shoes made for good kicking.

Parker loved his boots. She was always fascinated by the way he walked absolutely silently despite the heavy soles.

* * *

_Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.  
__Theodore Roosevelt_

* * *

**_A/N: I'm posting a big burst of chapters because A. I missed a bunch yesterday, and B. I'm probably going to be too exhausted to do any tomorrow. So here's some for the road._**


	46. Homegrown

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot grew and prepared almost everything he ate. He owned a large greenhouse that he tended to mostly by himself, and the kitchen at his apartment had _everything._ When the team ate out, Eliot sat somewhere he could see into the kitchen from, so he could watch them make his meal. Nobody ever asked, but he'd been poisoned before. Several times. Twice when he was recovering from an injury and not really aware of what was going on. Once, he'd actually eaten most of an apple with razor blades in it. Parker had laughed when he'd spit out the chunk of fruit she claimed to have done that to, but he remembered clearly the feeling of tiny knives slicing up his insides. He's not actually sure how he survived that. Probably pure stubbornness.

Most of the time, he didn't think about that. He preferred to remember how much he liked to grow things, and how satisfying cooking was. He thinks about meals made with and for friends. His food made the team happy. T'hat's what makes cooking an enjoyable job, not another paranoid habit. The relaxed, laughing dinners with his surrogate family.

* * *

_I'm pretty actively involved with the military because I think they're incredible human beings. If I can give back to them for what they're doing for us, it's a good thing. And I think to have happy soldiers, you need to feed them well.  
__Emeril Lagasse_


	47. No

DOG OF WAR

* * *

So yeah, Eliot can do makeup. And hair. He can throw together a mean updo when the situation calls for it. Hardison may have teased him about the guyliner at the runway job, but the hacker hadn't thought to ask who had applied the rather excellently done mascara. The story behind all that is that when Eliot was little, he'd practically raised his baby sister. That included helping her with girly stuff, even though his reputation would be shot if anyone ever found out that he could do both French braids and fishtails.

He'd never been able to say no to family.

* * *

_It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.  
__Arthur Schopenhauer_


	48. Healer

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot joined the army as a medic. He wasn't actually sure how he wound up in special forces, but somewhere along the line, somebody figured out that a man who could place bullets as neatly as he did stitches would be a benefit to any combat team. So he found himself working increasingly dangerous missions; missions where people didn't care if you were a medic, they just wanted you dead. He eventually realized that he was doing more killing than healing.

He decided to quit. His hands were dirty, and he'd never wanted that. He'd just wanted to help.

Two days before he was going to turn in his resignation, he and his team were assigned a suicide mission. Eliot was the only one who survived, and even he didn't make it out unscathed. When he finally got free and back to the States, he'd been declared MIA and assumed dead.

They hadn't even bothered to look for him.

So he set out for revenge. And by the time he stopped killing, he realized he could never be a healer again—he was too good at hurting.

* * *

_Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger, travel too far that road and the way is lost.  
**Terry Brooks**_


	49. Fancy

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot thinks that most gourmet food is crap. It's so concerned with being fancy or exotic or rare that it looses all semblance of good taste. That's not the point of food, to be snobbish or fancy. When Eliot makes gourmet food, he uses the best ingredients and takes his time and it tastes delicious. You enjoy eating it. That's what good food does.

And if anyone had a problem with that…well, he'd killed a man with an appetizer once. No one wanted to see what he could do with an entrée.

* * *

_Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.  
__Mason Cooley_


	50. Posessive

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot doesn't have much. He has a couple items of jewelry he's fond of—mostly leather and silver, a couple with natural stones. There's a bracelet braided from tail hairs from his first horse, a pinkie ring that was his mothers, a chunk of turquoise hung on a broken guitar string. His dogtags. He has a few books that he keeps tucked in a locker where's they're safe; all of them gifts that he's read over and over again, each one special. Practically every weapon he owns has a story behind it; some of them have matching scars. In the greenhouse on his roof he keeps a lemon tree sapling in the corner. It's a cutting from a tree he'd tended in his childhood, and though it's not big enough yet to actually produce fruit, he takes better care of it than any other plant. But mostly, everything he owns that matters can be tucked away into a duffel bag.

At least until he started working with the team. Now, he has enough stuff to occupy both of his apartments, several dozen fully-stocked safehouses, even more storage lockers, a garage's worth of cars, and the kitchen at the office. Unfortunately for the people he has to share space with, the possessive instinct that previously only applied to a few items has carried over to _all_ of this stuff. He gets snappish when people mess with his stuff.

He gets even angrier when someone messes with his _people._

* * *

_My friends are my estate.  
__Emily Dickinson_


	51. Matchmaker

DOG OF WAR

* * *

He was a not-very-closet romantic. Pretty much the whole team knew, and pretty much the whole team knew better than to bring it up. Well, except maybe Parker. Nobody was really sure what Parker knew. They sometimes felt a little guilty—Nate and Sophie had each other, and Parker and Hardison were together, which left Eliot as the odd man out. Alone. Unpartnered. A fifth wheel.

Luckily, office romances hadn't thrown off the whole team dynamic, and they're careful to include Eliot in things. Not that he's shown any sign of feeling excluded or resentful.

But the truth was that Eliot was just happy for the four of them. He'd had his shot at romance with Aimee (there were midnight serenades and bareback horse rides on the beach and dozens of wild roses) and he'd blown it, courtesy the governments of the US and North Korea. After that, he'd come to realize that his life was to dangerous for a serious romantic relationship. Sure, he had flings (_thank you, _Nurse Gale) and women he was attracted to, but nothing he was invested in. Not because he was sexist or something like that—he knew plenty of women hitters who were dang good at their jobs—but because he thought it wasn't fair to involve someone else in the mess his past made of things. He counted himself unbelievably fortunate to have people like the team, who knew he'd done terrible things and that he was dangerous to even be around, but still stayed.

So no, he didn't resent them.

People assumed that Sophie would be the team matchmaker, but she's not. That would be Eliot. He likes to see his team happy, and when they're together, they are.

* * *

_What is exciting is not for one person to be stronger than the other... but for two people to have met their match and yet they are equally as stubborn, as obstinate, as passionate, as crazy as the other. _  
_Barbra Streisand_

**_A/N: This may be the last chapter I post for a while. Thank you so much, o my readers, and please review on your way out! Please let me know if you have an idea for a new chapter, and I might write it. _**


	52. Thankful

DOG OF WAR

* * *

Eliot's not one to eat until he's stuffed. Food should be savored and enjoyed, not crammed down your gullet. Of course, it takes a _lot_ of food to stuff Eliot, because he's got the metabolism of a racehorse (which really backfires when your captors have you on a starvation diet.) But now there's the team, and once a year he kicks everyone out of the kitchen in Nate's apartment (not that they're really allowed in there for more than coffee and leftovers anyways) and just cooks for a day and a half. Then on Thursday he pulls the succulent, golden turkey from the oven, adds a garnish to the vat of fluffy white mashed potatoes, puts the finishing touches on a green bean casserole, and sets out no less than six pies to cool. All of this winds up on the conference table—laid out with a tablecloth and proper dishware—with the rest of the courses he's so painstakingly cooked. The pans get stuffed into the sink to be taken care of later, and he spends the next four hours at the table, slowly filling every square inch of internal space with perfect, just-like-mamma-made-it food. It's not as fancy as some of the stuff he makes, but it's better, in a way, because of what it's made for.

There aren't words for how thankful Eliot is for his family, which is okay, since he'll never try and say it. He doesn't need to. They can taste it just fine.

* * *

_Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.  
Albert Schweitzer_

**_A/N: Happy thanksgiving, everyone! (Non-Americans included. We're thankful for you!)_**


End file.
